THE CHEERFUL GLACIER
Very many years ago, at the foot of a nameless peak between Mount Ritter and Togobah, after three successive years of deep snow there was a glacier born. It crept out fanwise from a furrow on the mountain-side, very high up, above the limit of the white-barked pines, and its upper end was lost under the drift of loose snow that trailed down the slope. For three successive winters the gray veil of storms hung month-long about the crest of the Sierras, while the snow came falling, falling, and the wind kept heaping, heaping, until the drifts sagged and slipped of their own weight down the long groove of the mountain; and since it lay on the sunless northern slope, and as it happened the summers that came between fell cool and rainy, there, when the spring thaw had cleared the loose snow, spread out on a little stony flat lay the rim of the glacier. Yet it was a very little one, a rod or two of clear shining ice that ran into deep blue and gray sludge under a drift of coarse, whitish granules, and very high up, fine dry particles of snow like powdered glass. So it lay at the time of year when the mountain sheep began to come back to their summer feeding-grounds.
When the thaw had cleared the heather and warmed the lichened rocks, they loosed their hold of the ice, and the great weight of it began to crawl down the mountain. At the first slow thrill of motion the little glacier creaked with delight.
"Ah," it said, "it is evident that I am not a mere snow bank, for in that case I should remain in one place. Now I know myself truly a glacier." For up to that time it had been in some doubt.
By the end of the summer it had advanced more than a span in the shadow of the peak. Then the snows began, deep and heavy, but the glacier did not complain; it hugged the floor of the rift where it lay, and thought of the time when it should start on its travels again. So, because of thinking about it so much, or because the snows were deeper and the summers not so warm, the glacier increased and went forward until it had quite crossed the stony flat, and began to believe it might make its mark in the world. There were any number of reasons for thinking so. To begin with, all that neighborhood was deeply scarred and scoured by the trail of old glaciers, and the high peaks glittered with the keen polish of ice floes. All down the slope shone glassy bosses of clear granite succeeding to beds of cassiope and blue heather, polished slips of granite, pentstemon and more heather, smooth granite that the feet could take no hold upon, then saxifrage and meadowsweet, and so down to the stream border, where the water quarreled with the stones. And by the time the little glacier had settled that it would leave such a mark on the mountain-side, shining and softened by small blossomy things, it had come quite to the farthest border of the flat, and looked over the edge of a sharp descent. It was much too far to bend over, for though the glacier was all of brittle ice, it could bend a little.
"But it is really nothing," said the glacier. "I have only to grind down the cliff until it is the proper height;" and it took a firmer hold on the sharp fragments of stones it had gathered on its way down the ravine. The pressure of the sodden snow above kept on, however, and before the glacier had fairly begun its grinding the ice rim was pushed out beyond the bluff, broke off, and lay at the foot in a shining heap.
"So much the better," said the cheerful glacier. "What with grinding above and filling with broken ice below, the work will be accomplished in half the time."
But that never really happened, for this was the last season the ice reached to the far edge of the flat. The next year there was less snow and more sun. The long slope of bare rocks gathered up the heat and held it so that the ice began to melt underneath, and a stream ran from it and fell over the cliff in a fine silvery veil.